Search Results (15,777)

Over the past few decades, the oceans have stored the majority of the excess heat in the climate system resulting from anthropogenic emissions. An accurate, long-term sea surface temperature (SST) dataset is essential for monitoring and researching the changes to the global oceans. A variety of SST datasets have been produced by various institutes over the years, and here, we present a new SST data record produced originally within the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (which is therefore named CMEMS v2.0) and assess: (1) its accuracy compared to independent observations; (2) how it compares with the previous version (named CMEMS v1.2); and (3) its performance during two major volcanic eruptions. By comparing both versions of the CMEMS datasets using independent in situ observations, we show that both datasets are within the target accuracy of 0.1 K, but that CMEMS v2.0 is closer to the ground truth. The uncertainty fields generated by the two analyses were also compared, and CMEMS v2.0 was found to provide a more accurate estimate of its own uncertainties. Frequency and vector analysis of the SST fields determined that CMEMS v2.0 feature resolution and horizontal gradients were also superior, indicating that it resolved oceanic features with greater clarity. The behavior of the two analyses during two volcanic eruption events (Mt. Pinatubo and El Chichón) was examined. A comparison with the HadSST4 gridded in situ dataset suggested a cool bias in the CMEMS v2.0 dataset versus the v1.2 dataset following the Pinatubo eruption, although a comparison with sparser buoy-only observations yielded less clear results. No clear impact of the El Chichón eruption (which was a smaller event than Mt. Pinatubo) on CMEMS v2.0 was found. Overall, with the exception of a few specific and extreme events early in the time series, CMEMS v2.0 possesses high accuracy, resolution, and stability and is recommended to users. Full article

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of a comprehensive educational program on preeclamptic women’s knowledge, risk perception of cardiovascular disease, self-efficacy, and adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors. Patients and methods: This study employed a pretest-posttest design. One hundred and two women who previously had preeclampsia were enrolled from July 2022 to December 2022 from outpatient obstetric, gynecological, and family planning clinics. The primary and secondary outcomes were measured at baseline, after eight weeks, and after three months of the educational intervention. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 23, descriptive and inferential statistics, specifically the Chi-square test, independent t-tests, and repeated measures ANOVA. Results: A statistically significant difference was found between the two groups immediately post-intervention and the three-month follow-up, with a significant improvement among the intervention group than control group regarding cardiovascular disease knowledge (p < 0.001), risk perception (p < 0.001), self-efficacy (p < 0.001), and healthy lifestyle behaviors (p < 0.001). There was a statistically significant interaction between group and time regarding total cardiovascular disease risk perception (F = 203.67, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.673), self-efficacy (F = 70.06, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.405), and adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors (F = 145.08, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.597). Conclusion: This study concluded that the comprehensive educational program had a positive effect on improving preeclamptic women’s knowledge and risk perception of CVD, self-efficacy, and adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors following preeclampsia. Full article

The impact of heat exposure on the health and performance of soccer players is a widely discussed topic. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of the international literature that has addressed this issue. To achieve this objective, we initially conducted a bibliometric analysis and a literature review of the main topics that emerged through bibliometric techniques. For the bibliometric analysis, we employed VOSviewer software (version 1.6.20.0) and used documents found in the Scopus database. The analysis ultimately included 133 documents published in 66 sources. Key journals and authors were identified, highlighting significant contributions to the field. Science mapping revealed collaboration networks and research focus areas such as physical health, safety, soccer performance, dehydration and hydration, physiological mechanisms and monitoring, nutrition, fluid intake, and cooling techniques. Based on the key areas highlighted in the identified clusters, which emerged from the co-occurrence analysis of the author keywords, the following three topics were developed in the literature review: (a) the physiology and health of football players; (b) performance impacts; and (c) strategies to prevent negative consequences. The review showed that high heat exposure can reduce the physical and cognitive performance of athletes and prove detrimental to their health. To mitigate the negative consequences, appropriate hydration strategies, heat acclimatization, and cooling techniques have been proposed. Our findings provide the international scientific community with comprehensive knowledge of the existing literature, laying the foundation for future research while simultaneously offering coaches and athletes the necessary theoretical knowledge to help improve safety and performance. Full article

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are regarded as a promising alternative to traditional antibiotics in the face of ever-increasing resistance. However, many AMPs fail to progress into clinics due to unexpected difficulties found in preclinical in vivo phases. Our research has focused on crotalicidin (Ctn), an AMP from snake venom, and a fragment thereof, Ctn[15-34], with improved in vitro antimicrobial and anticancer activities and remarkable serum stability. As the retroenantio versions of both AMPs maintained favorable profiles, in this work, we evaluate the in vivo efficacy of both the native-sequence AMPs and their retroenantio counterparts in a murine infection model with Acinetobacter baumannii. A significant reduction in bacterial levels is found in the mice treated with Ctn[15-34]. However, contrary to expectations, the retroenantio analogs either exhibit toxicity or lack efficacy when administered to mice. Our findings underscore the critical importance of in vivo infection model evaluation to fully calibrate the therapeutic potential of AMPs. Full article

(1) Background: Intrinsic defense mechanisms are pivotal host strategies to restrict viruses already at early stages of their infection. Here, we addressed the question of how the autophagy receptor sequestome 1 (SQSTM1/p62, hereafter referred to as p62) interferes with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection. (2) Methods: CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing, mass spectrometry and the expression of p62 phosphovariants from recombinant HCMVs were used to address the role of p62 during infection. (3) Results: The knockout of p62 resulted in an increased release of HCMV progeny. Mass spectrometry revealed an interaction of p62 with cellular proteins required for nucleocytoplasmic transport. Phosphoproteomics further revealed that p62 is hyperphosphorylated at position S272 in HCMV-infected cells. Phosphorylated p62 showed enhanced nuclear retention, which is concordant with enhanced interaction with viral proteins relevant for genome replication and nuclear capsid egress. This modification led to reduced HCMV progeny release compared to a non-phosphorylated version of p62. (4) Conclusions: p62 is a restriction factor for HCMV replication. The activity of the receptor appears to be regulated by phosphorylation at position S272, leading to enhanced nuclear localization, viral protein degradation and impaired progeny production. Full article

Background and Objectives: This study investigated whether there is an association between elderly frailty and asthma. Material Methods: We examined 9745 elderly participants who did not have asthma and 275 elderly patients who had asthma diagnosed by a doctor from the 2020 Survey of Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Korean Older Persons Survey. Study Selections: The Korean version of the fatigue, resistance, ambulation, illnesses, and loss of weight (K-FRAIL) scale was used to determine their level of frailty. The relationship between frailty and geriatric asthma was examined using multiple logistic regression analysis, which was adjusted for a number of confounding variables (socioeconomic, health behavior, psychological characteristics, and functional status). Results: Frailty as defined by the K-FRAIL scale was significantly higher in the asthma group (7.6%) than the non-asthma group (4.9%). The frailty phenotype component showed that resistance, ambulation, and illness severity were more severe in the asthma group than the non-asthma group. After adjusting, asthma was significantly associated with an increased risk of frailty (OR 1.45; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01–2.09) compared to the non-asthma group. Conclusions: Frailty might be associated with elderly asthma in patients from the Korean population. Frailty may not only be associated with asthma, but also with other diseases. So, more evidence is needed to establish this association. Full article

Flooding stress caused by climate change is a serious threat to crop productivity. To enhance our understanding of flooding stress in soybean, we analyzed the transcriptome of the roots of soybean plants after waterlogging treatment for 10 days at the V2 growth stage. Through RNA sequencing analysis, 870 upregulated and 1129 downregulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified and characterized using Gene Ontology (GO) and MapMan software (version 3.6.0RC1). In the functional classification analysis, “alcohol biosynthetic process” was the most significantly enriched GO term in downregulated DEGs, and phytohormone-related genes such as ABA, cytokinin, and gibberellin were upregulated. Among the transcription factors (TFs) in DEGs, AP2/ERFs were the most abundant. Furthermore, our DEGs encompassed eight soybean orthologs from Arabidopsis and rice, such as 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidase. Along with a co-functional network consisting of the TF and orthologs, the expression changes of those genes were tested in a waterlogging-resistant cultivar, PI567343. These findings contribute to the identification of candidate genes for waterlogging tolerance in soybean, which can enhance our understanding of waterlogging tolerance. Full article

Fractional cointegration in time series data has been explored by several authors, but panel data applications have been largely neglected. A previous study of ours discovered that the Chen and Hurvich fractional cointegration test for time series was fairly robust to a moderate degree of heterogeneity across sections of the six tests considered. Therefore, this paper advances a customized version of the Chen and Hurvich methodology to detect cointegrating connections in panels with unobserved fixed effects. Specifically, we develop a test statistic that accommodates variation in the long-term cointegrating vectors and fractional cointegration parameters across observational units. The behavior of our proposed test is examined through extensive Monte Carlo experiments under various data-generating processes and circumstances. The findings reveal that our modified test performs quite well comparatively and can successfully identify fractional cointegrating relationships in panels, even in the presence of idiosyncratic disturbances unique to each cross-sectional unit. Furthermore, the proposed modified test procedure established the presence of long-run equilibrium between the exchange rate and labor wage of 36 countries’ agricultural markets. Full article

Current research efforts on commercial supersonic flight aim to overcome past challenges by designing a new generation of sustainable supersonic airplanes. Achieving this goal requires careful consideration of the propulsion system during the design process. This study proposes a mixed-flow turbofan engine model coupled with emission estimation routines to increase the reliability of the conceptual design of future supersonic aircraft. The model enables parametric analyses by analyzing variations in main engine design parameters (${\pi }_c,{\pi }_f, BPR$) as function of the system and mission requirements, such as the Mach number, and suggesting applicability boundaries. The overall methodology was applied to a low-boom Mach 1.5 case study, allowing for both on-design and off-design analyses and generating a propulsive database to support preliminary mission simulations and chemical emission estimation. Finally, the accuracy and reliability of the engine model was validated against GSP 11 data for a generic mixed-flow turbofan engine. A modified version of the Fuel Flow Method, originally developed by Boeing, allowing for emissions estimation throughout the mission for a supersonic engine using biofuels. The application of the methodology led to the definition of an engine with a ${\pi }_c$ of 30 and BPR of 0.7 for the selected case study, which was successful in meeting the initial mission requirements. Full article

Emergencies in gas pipeline networks can lead to significant loss of life and property, necessitating extensive professional knowledge for effective response and management. Effective emergency response depends on specialized knowledge, which can be captured efficiently through domain-specific lexicons. The goal of this research is to develop a specialized lexicon that integrates domain-specific knowledge to improve emergency management in gas pipeline networks. The process starts with an enhanced version of Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), a statistical method used in information retrieval, combined with filtering logic to extract candidate words from investigation reports. Simultaneously, we fine tune the Chinese Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model, a state-of-the-art language model, with domain-specific data to enhance semantic capture and integrate domain knowledge. Next, words with similar meanings are identified through word similarity analysis based on standard terminology and risk inventories, facilitating lexicon expansion. Finally, the domain-specific lexicon is formed by amalgamating these words. Validation shows that this method, which integrates domain knowledge, outperforms models that lack such integration. The resulting lexicon not only assigns domain-specific weights to terms but also deeply embeds domain knowledge, offering robust support for cause analysis and emergency management in gas pipeline networks. Full article

The World Air Quality Index indicates that Pakistan ranks as the third most polluted country, regarding the average (Particulate Matter) PM_2.5 concentration, which is 14.2 times higher than the World Health Organization’s annual air quality guideline. It is crucial to implement a program aimed at reducing PM_2.5 levels in Pakistan’s urban areas. This review paper highlights the importance of indoor air pollution in urban regions such as Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, and Karachi, while also considering the effects of outdoor air temperature on occupants’ thermal comfort. The study aims to evaluate past methodological approaches to enhance indoor air quality in buildings. The main research question is to address whether there are statistical correlations between the PM_2.5 and the operative air temperature and whether other indoor climatic variables have an impact on the thermal comfort assessment in densely built urban agglomeration regions in Pakistan. A systematic review analysis method was employed to investigate the effects of particulate matter (PM_2.5), carbon oxides (COx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on residents’ health. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) protocol guided the identification of key terms and the extraction of cited studies. The literature review incorporated a combination of descriptive research methods to inform the research context regarding both ambient and indoor air quality, providing a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding air pollution and its mitigation in various global contexts. The study found a marginally significant relationship between the PM_2.5 operative air temperature and occupants’ overall temperature satisfaction, Ordinal Regression (OR) = 0.958 (95%—Confidence Interval (CI) [0.918, 1.000]), p = 0.050, Nagelkerke − Regression (R²) = 0.042. The study contributes to research on the development of an evidence-based thermal comfort assessment benchmark criteria for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Global Thermal Comfort Database version 2.1. Full article

Ameloblastoma is a rare, benign, but locally aggressive odontogenic tumor that originates from the epithelial cells involved in tooth development. The surgical approach to treating an ameloblastoma depends on the type, size, location, and extent of the tumor, as well as the patient’s age and overall health. This umbrella review’s aim is to summarize the findings from systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses on the effect of radical or conservative treatment of ameloblastoma on the recurrence rate and quality of life, to evaluate the methodological quality of the included SRs and discuss the clinical management. Three electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, The Cochrane Library) were checked. The primary outcome was the recurrence rate after surgical treatment, while the secondary outcomes were the post-operative complications, quality of life, esthetic, and functional impairment. The methodological quality of the included SRs was assessed using the updated version of “A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Review” (AMSTAR-2). Eighteen SRs were included. The quality of the included reviews ranged from critically low (three studies) to high (eight studies). Four studies were included in meta-analysis, and they revealed that the recurrence rate is about three-times more likely in the conservative treatment group compared to the radical treatment group, and this result is statistically significant. Despite the high recurrence rate, the latter was more appropriate in the case of smaller lesions and younger patients, due to better post-operative quality of life and reduced functional and esthetic impairments. Based on the results of this overview, conservative treatment may be recommended as the first-line approach for intraosseous ameloblastoma not involving soft tissue. However, given the expectation of a higher recurrence rate, it is advisable to reduce the interval between follow-up visits. However, further prospective studies are needed to establish the best treatment choice and follow-up period. Full article

This applied research proposes a solution to the static government design process for Thai healthcare architecture to better serve the needs of its elderly society. In its place, a novel real-time design process, termed the Digital Twin Immersive Design Process (DT-IDP), repurposes aspects of digital twin and virtual reality technologies into a ‘unitary’ immersive design system. This system accesses ‘experiential’ user-centered data, helping enhance the design of Thai healthcare space beyond a standardized government response. This text builds a rationale for departing from the current design process by describing the formation and advantages of the DT-IDP process. To test its credibility, the DT-IDP process is used to build and compare two digital versions of an existing healthcare space. In these spaces, participants are immersed (elderly patients n = 30; nursing staff n = 5; government healthcare architects n = 5) to assess visitor experiences based on daylighting, artificial lighting, and views of nature. Following immersion, government healthcare architects are interviewed in-depth to evaluate the process’s efficacy and their willingness to adopt it. Results confirm the potential for this process to capture ‘user-centered’ insights, otherwise unobtainable without immersion. Consequently, healthcare architects express a unanimous preference for DT-IDP, acknowledging its unique capacity to bridge a market gap through an experiential component that could better assist them in creating a superior final product. Ultimately, they assert that demand for these features could have a disruptive impact to the current healthcare design process, helping to re-envisage the design of future Thai healthcare space. Full article

Wind energy is essential for sustainable energy development, providing a clean and reliable energy source through the wind turbine. However, the vortices and turbulence generated as wind passes through turbines reduce wind speed and increase turbulence, leading to significant power losses for downstream turbines in wind farms. This study investigates wake characteristics in wind turbines by examining the effects of different scale ratios on wake dynamics, using both experimental and numerical approaches, utilizing scaled-down models of the Aeolos H-20 kW turbine at scales of 1:33, 1:50, and 1:67. The experimental component involved wind tunnel tests in an open-circuit tunnel with adjustable wind speeds and controlled turbulence intensity. Additionally, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted using STAR-CCM+ (Version 15.06.02) to numerically analyze the wake characteristics. Prior to the simulation, a convergence test was performed by varying grid density and y+ values to establish optimized simulation settings essential for accurately capturing wake dynamics. The results were validated against experimental data, reinforcing the reliability of the simulations. Despite minor inconsistencies in areas affected by tower and nacelle interference, the overall results strongly support the methodology’s effectiveness. The discrepancies between the experimental results and CFD simulations underscore the limitations of the rigid body assumption, which does not fully account for the deformation observed in the experiment. Full article

Real-time (re-)planning is crucial for autonomous quadrotors to navigate in uncertain environments where obstacles may be detected and trajectory plans must be adjusted on-the-fly to avoid collision. In this paper, we present a control system design for autonomous quadrotors that has real-time re-planning capability, including the hardware pipeline for the hardware–software integration to realize the proposed real-time re-planning algorithm. The framework is based on a modified version of the PX4 Autopilot and a Raspberry Pi 5 companion computer. The planning algorithm utilizes minimum-snap trajectory generation, taking advantage of the differential flatness property of quadrotors, to realize computationally light, real-time re-planning using an onboard computer. We first verify the control system and the planning algorithm through simulation experiments, followed by implementing and demonstrating the system on hardware using a quadcopter. Full article